Some of the earliest comments about a deaf community in France come from Pierre
Desloges (1742–?), who in 1779 became the first deaf man to publish a defense of
sign language.6
Desloges was from the central part of France known as Touraine.7
He was raised in the village of Grand-Pressigny in the shadow of the castles of
the Loire river valley. The local lord had appointed Desloges’ father to the
post of tax collector, a dubious assignment from the viewpoint of the local
peasants, but one that suggests that the Desloges family was not destitute.
Pierre Desloges had one younger sister, Marie-Anne, born in 1746. Like many
other children of the late eighteenth century, Pierre Desloges’ young life was
dramatically changed by an outbreak of smallpox. He contracted the disease at
the age of seven, and the resulting fever caused his deafness. The affects of
the disease lingered for several years, and as a result, the young Desloges lost
almost all of his teeth and his ability to speak French.8
He relied on writing and poor pronunciation as the basis of his communication
skills, an indication that he had received at least a little primary schooling
or some individual tutoring as a child. However, he did not learn sign language,
except for some disconnected home signs, until about twenty years later.9

Based on Desloges’ own reflections, cruelty and discrimination routinely marked
his young life. Even his parents did not believe that he was capable of learning
a trade, which would have given him some economic stability and a measure of
self-worth. He remembered that “relatives, friends [sic], and neighbors” treated
him as though he was “beastly, imbecilic, [and] insane.”10
The young man could scarcely communicate with those around him, but their derision
cut deeply. It is no wonder that Desloges left his native Touraine.

Desloges arrived in Paris in 1761, nineteen years old and ready to make a new
life for himself. Paris, at that time, had a population of more than half a
million people, and a sizable number—one estimate is about two-thirds—had
migrated to the city in the latter half of the eighteenth century.11
Many of
these people were impoverished and lived on the streets. Desloges was excited
about living in a large city like Paris, which he called a kind of “marvel of
the universe.” He relished the chance to see new and interesting things that he
thought expanded the minds of deaf people. Desloges was the kind of person who
drew energy from all the hustle and bustle of the city around him. As he
searched daily for work, Desloges probably encountered other deaf people in
Paris, a welcome change compared to his isolation in the countryside.12
When he
was twenty-seven years old (in 1769), Desloges learned sign language for the
first time from a deaf Italian man who could neither read nor write.13
The man,
who worked as a servant in some wealthy homes, was deaf from birth. Desloges
noticed that despite this Italian’s apparent illiterate condition, he could
function well in sign language. Though we do not know how long it took Desloges
to learn the basics of natural sign language from his Italian friend, it could
not have been very long.14
Desloges, who had always relied on written language
for communication, now had another outlet. This was certainly a turning point in
his life, for Desloges now had a practical language—he called sign language
“this useful art”—that would allow him to converse with other deaf people in
Paris.15

Desloges was not afraid to engage directly in the debate over language that so
absorbed the elites of the Parisian salons during the 1770s.16
However, unlike
the intellectuals of the day, Desloges was interested in more practical matters.
His comments about deaf people in Observations d’un sourd et muet reveal
his frustration with how hearing people regarded the deaf minority, and he
dearly wanted to set the record straight.17
Abbé Deschamps, a teacher of deaf children
from the town of Orléans, had written a book in defense of spoken language for
deaf people.18
This book motivated Desloges to produce his own tract that would
rebut the key parts of Deschamps’ pedagogy. Desloges clearly felt that he was
ideally suited to analyze Deschamps’ oral pedagogy, because, as a deaf man, he
was able to comment on which instructional methods best helped deaf people learn
in school. Desloges was very confrontational in Observations d’un sourd et muet,
but also very precise.19
Because he repeatedly cited pages in Deschamps’ work,
we know that Desloges was a careful and accurate reader who combed the pages of
Deschamps’ book like a detective to unearth every falsehood behind Deschamps’
claims. Readers who enjoyed a sharp debate surely were not disappointed. In
short order, Desloges challenged Deschamps to think about how he would learn
English as a foreign language. Of course, Desloges’ main point was that we
always use our first language as a point of reference to learn a foreign
language. It was normal, then, for deaf children first to rely on sign language
before they were introduced to written or spoken French. For Desloges, this oral
method was simply an inefficient way to educate deaf children. Because Deschamps
had also argued that sign language was too difficult to learn, Desloges replied
that it would only take six weeks to gain a sufficient mastery of sign language.
He even recommended that Deschamps come to Paris to learn some signs from Abbé
de l’Epée!20

According to Desloges, Paris in the 1760s already had a nascent deaf community.
Deaf people regularly associated among themselves, and a deaf person routinely
had the opportunity to develop his signing ability with other deaf people. Those
who knew a smaller number of signs gained more fluency from the constant
interaction inside this deaf society. In this way, the entire community
continued to evolve linguistically as the natural language of signs grew more
elaborate. Desloges’ social circle was the laboring class of deaf people, among
whom he counted himself (he had found work as a bookbinder and upholsterer in
1776). Many of his friends had been born deaf and did not know how to read or
write French. Nor had they had any contact with Abbé de l’Epée at his residence
on the rue des Moulins. They formed a different society of deaf people who were
improving their lives in small steps. Through natural sign language, these deaf
men were able to learn enough about the tenets of the Catholic faith to receive
the sacraments of Holy Communion and to marry in the Church. These deaf
tradespeople took an avid interest in the world around them and, as Desloges
noted, “we express ourselves on all subjects with as much order, precision and
clarity as if we were able to speak and hear.”21